Imperial Eden: Victoria Bc in Verse C. 1858-1920

By Robert Ratcliffe Taylor

Imperial Eden is a collection of poems written mainly by citizens of Victoria, British Columbia, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries about that city. Established in 1843 as a Hudsons Bay Company trading post, Victoria became the capital of the province in 1866. Before the opening of the Panama Canal and the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, however, its inhabitants were relatively isolated from the rest of North America.
The citys beautiful location and its semi-Mediterranean climate inspired visitors, locals, and poets to describe it as a paradise. But this remote Eden, surrounded by mountains, forest and the sea, was deeply loyal to Great Britain, believing that its far-flung empire was the repository of freedom and many civic and moral virtues. As well, local writers exhibited a militarism usually associated with Prussia.
Eager to defend the British Empire, many of its citizens enthusiastically supported England in the remote South African War (1899-1902) and volunteered for service in the Great War (1914-18). Both wars were seen as a defence of decency and civilization embodied by Britain.This book shows how local poets lauded the beauty, the Britishness of Victoria and the imperial connection, but also how, confronted with the realities of modern warfare, their loyalty to the Empire waned c. 1920.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Nov 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490750040

Robert Ratcliffe Taylor

Professor emeritus in the history department of Brock University, Robert Ratcliffe Taylor was born and raised in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where he now resides. He has a BA in history and English from the University of British Columbia; an MA in history, also from UBC; and a PhD in History from Stanford University. He has written on the history of German architecture, on the Welland Canal, and on the city of St. Catharines, Ontario. Recently, he has published books and articles on Victoria. He serves as a volunteer docent at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. He is married to Anne, with whom he has one son, Robert John.

Book preview

IMPERIAL EDEN

VICTORIA BC IN VERSE C.

1858-1920

Robert Ratcliffe Taylor

©

Copyright 2014 Robert Ratcliffe Taylor.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

isbn: 978-1-4907-5003-3 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4907-5010-1 (hc)

isbn: 978-1-4907-5004-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014919293

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Trafford rev. 11/10/2014

33164.png www.trafford.com

North America & international

toll-free: 1 888 232 4444 (USA & Canada)

fax: [phone]

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

BEFOREHAND

TO BEGIN

PART ONE Victoria in Verse

Why Verse?

Why Victoria?

PART TWO A Perfect British Eden

Paradise (And Its Disc0ntents)

England’s Sister-Twin

PART THREE Victorians and Others

An Ethnic Mosaic

The Great … And The Not So Great

Gold!

The People to the South

PART FOUR Fads, Fashions, Fun — and Business

Indoor and Outdoor Pleasures

Of Manners and Mores

Sin and Crime, Etc.

Newspaper Wars

Selling Things

PART FIVE Technological and Social Change

The March of Progress

The New Woman

Temperance?

The Young

PART SIX The Throb of Britain’s War Drums

We Love to Hear the Cannons Roar

A Threat to Paradise?

Our Boys at War

The German Enemy

On the Home Front

Pacifist, Boloist, Slacker and Gink

LOOKING BACK — AND AHEAD

1.jpg

Fig. 1 Victoria City Hall: Poets were proud of the developing city as exemplified by its expanded City Hall (finished in 1890; designed by John Teague) and its electric streetcar system (the first in Canada), but some were critical of the municipal government and others had doubts about the efficiency of the new trams. (Williams’ Official British Columbia Directory, Part 1, 1892)

NOTE: Short portions of this book have appeared in the following of my publications:

The Mark of the Hun. The Image of Germans in Popular Verse Published in Victoria, B.C., during the Great War, British Columbia History. Vol. 42, No. 3, 2-7.

The Ones Who Have to Pay. The Soldier-Poets of Victoria B.C. in the Great War 1914-18. Bloomington, IN: Trafford, 2013.

A Note on Some ‘Lost’ Poems by Robert W. Service, Canadian Poetry/Studies/Documents/Reviews. No. 62, Spring/Summer, 2008, 80-86.

Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to use illustrations or verse which may be under copyright.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. 1 Victoria City Hall

Fig. 2 A Mutual Sorrow

Fig. 3 Titles of Poetry Columns in the Daily Colonist

Fig. 4 Outpost of Empire

Fig. 5 Queen Victoria

Fig. 6 Craigdarroch Castle

Fig. 7 A Tea Room Advertisement

Fig. 8 Amor de Cosmos and an Unwelcome Victorian

Fig. 9 Premier Richard McBride

Fig. 10 The Klondyke Gold Rush

Fig. 11 Government 1892

Fig. 12 Advertisement for Saunders Grocery

Fig. 13 The New Court House

Fig. 14 Offices of the Victoria Daily Colonist

Fig. 15 Offices of the Victoria Daily Times

Fig. 16 J. Herrick MacGregor

Fig. 17 Auto Roads on Vancouver Island

Fig. 18 Advertisement for Rithet and Co.

Fig. 19 Tobacco Advertisement

Fig. 20 University School

Fig. 21 Jolly Soldiers

Fig. 22 Emperor William II

Fig. 23 The Canadian Patriotic Fund

Fig. 24 Victoria’s Future?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

R esearch for this book was made easier by the friendly assistance of the staff at the Archives of British Columbia, the Victoria City Archives, the Local History Room at the Victoria Public Library and the Microforms Room at the University of Victoria.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Kevin McCabe of Blarneystone Publications for first suggesting a book with this theme. I am especially indebted to Dr. D. Gillian Thompson for her constructive criticism and encouragement. As usual, my wife Anne offered constant support. Of course, any misconceptions or errors in this book are my own responsibility.

BEFOREHAND

I n the late nineteenth century, many poets lauded British Columbia’s capital as both an idyllic paradise and an outpost of the British Empire. Ironically, Victorians’ love of the Empire and its military glory led them enthusiastically into the Great War of 1914-1918, a conflict which helped to end both their relatively paradisal isolation and their love of things British. Such is the theme of this essay.

Readers who are not interested in the historical background of the poems can skip the first section. Other readers may want simply to dip into the poetry here and there, as the section titles interest them.

TO BEGIN

I n his history of late nineteenth century Victoria, local writer Derek Pethick records the pride, confidence and optimism of local people who believed they were living on a blessed isle. * Indeed, many pre-1914 Victorians often expressed a sense of delight in both their geographical setting and their ethnic heritage, as their poems published in local newspapers and magazines reveal.

Reading these old periodicals is both challenging and rewarding. Even if you don’t understand the intricacies of political history a century ago, the caricatures can be amusing. In the twenty-first century, of course, some of the jokes and the funny papers can still provoke chuckles. The commercial advertisements reveal people’s concerns and worries back then — even if the products sometimes seem absurd. Especially interesting are the poems which were regularly printed in Victoria’s several newspapers and journals in the period c. 1858-1920. Their subjects were many. Poets often admired local scenery or important persons. Some wrote political satire; others, advertisements for products on sale. A few are obscure in their references, while others can astonish us by their relevance to twenty-first century Victoria.

Local citizens writing to the editors often wrote in verse. The purpose of this book is to show that many of the poems are records of the values and concerns of our great-grandparents a hundred years ago.

2.jpg

Fig. 2 A Mutual Sorrow: When the Imperial navy abandoned Esquimalt, some locals, such as the artist Emily Carr (1871-1945) may have felt abandoned by Great Britain but she, like many Victorians, expressed herself in prose and verse (as well as in paint). (The Week, 25 February 1905)

The poems here were submitted to and were published by the editors of Victoria newspapers and journals. Occasionally they printed works written by poets who never saw Victoria and were not thinking of the city when they wrote, but whose verse was deemed relevant to Victoria by editors. (I have also occasionally included a few works published in edited compilations.) In the process of my research, I have sometimes made discoveries which are amusing and revealing, as in a poem by the artist Emily Carr (1871-1945) which, accompanied by her illustration, was published on page one of Victoria’s The Week, on 25 February 1905:

There’s a silver Sockeye Salmon

Swimming round Esquimalt Bay

And his tail is curled in anguish

Tears are in his eyes they say

There’s a melancholy Middie**

Uniformed in blue and gold,

Woeful wailing by the water —

Very downcast, I am told.

Why oh Salmon? Why oh Middie?

Mourn you, sigh you, fret and weep,

Is some shadow o’er Esquimalt

Brooding o’er its waters deep?

Aye ‘tis sounds of coming, going,

Sad farewells for fish and man,

For the middie different waters

For the fish:— a can.

Here Carr— and presumably other locals (but perhaps not fish) — lamented the termination of Britain’s Pacific Command on 1 March 1905, when Canada assumed responsibility for its own naval defence. We knew that Carr was an accomplished prose writer (not to mention a superlative painter!), but apparently she also tried her hand at political cartooning — and verse. As well, several poems by the Bard of the Yukon, Robert Service (1874-1958), written while he was employed as a bank clerk here, appeared in the Victoria Daily Colonist. Similar surprises, as well as humour and insights into Victoria life over a century ago, are found in the following pages.

I have given the complete text of most of the poems reproduced here. Occasionally, however, the verbosity of the poet has necessitated the omission of some lines — indicated by an ellipsis (… ).

Of course, this book cannot present a complete picture of Victorians’ beliefs and opinions. Some might argue that such poetry was an expressive only of the literate, articulate, political and social elite who created the tone of the culture. And they would be partly correct. But in fact some of the lower orders wrote verse and are represented in these pages — which testifies to the popularity of poetry-writing and the ubiquitousness of certain mentalities at the time.

Nevertheless, my readers may want to know why I have dedicated a whole book to poetry published in Victoria so long ago.

25.jpg

PART ONE

Victoria in Verse

Why Verse?

W hen many twenty-first century people hear the word poetry, their eyes glaze over and their brains freeze. And why not? Much modern verse is highly intellectual and deeply abstruse. Moreover, many of us recall dreary English Lit classes in high school taught by teachers who never felt the sensual rush provided by a truly fine poem. Yet, in the 19 th century, many Victoria writers, editors and readers loved poetry and, by extension, the English language itself — and its idiosyncrasies. In 1860, for example, the Victoria British Colonist delighted in An English Orthograph Puzzle, by an anonymous poet:

Wife, make me some dumplings of dough,

They’re better than meat for my cough;

Pray let them be boiled ’til hot through,

But not ’til they’re heavy or tough.

Now I must be off to the plough,

And the boys (when they’ve had enough)

Must keep the flies off with a bough,

While the old mare drinks at the trough.

(The British Colonist, 3 January 1860)

Other poets reveled in creating vivid word-pictures. On the front page of its weekend supplement for 29 March 1908, for example, the Victoria Daily Colonist printed a poem by the English immigrant and sportsman Clive Phillips-Wolley (1854 - 1918):

The Salmon Run

Vague space, and in the hush Dawn’s pencil drew

  On the damp clouds of darkness, line by line,

Peaks and vast headlands, and a fresh wind blew

  Sharp with the stinging kisses of the brine,

Pungent with perfume of the sunburnt pine.

Through drifting veils of filmy forest smoke,

  Filtered the rose-pink sunrise of the day.

The sea plains heaved; the tide-rip laughing woke;

  Beyond the sun-limned circle of the bay

Ocean, a palpitating opal, lay,

Milk-white mysterious. Throbbing faery fire

  Coursed through its veins and all the madcap throng

Which cradles in the tide-rip, oceans choir,

  In stoles of roughened silver, deep-voiced, strong,

Danced as it sang the young tide’s meeting song,

Working the sea to madness. Sudden waves

  Roared by the cliffs, fretted the canopies

Written with runes, and echoed in the caves.

  There was no wind to swing the slender trees

And yet through fields of calm ran racing seas.

Strange eddies came and went. The blacktoothed rocks

  Were whelmed in waters piled upon an heap [sic].

Louder and louder grew the thunder-shocks

  Of the tempestous rip. Beyond, the Deep

Lay calm and smiling, mother-like, asleep.

Then fell a miracle. The waters knew

  Some deep sea-call, and their swift tides became

Incarnate, and sudden incarnate grew

  Their shifting light. Argent and azure flame

Drave through the Deep. The salmon pilgrims came.

A foredoomed pilgrimage from depths profound

  To grey Alaskan waters, turgid, pent

In mildewed pines, where neither sun nor sound

  Of oceans’ song can reach — the last event

To rot on glacial mud, frayed, leprous, spent.

Not every poem published by Victoria’s newspapers a century ago was so extravagant in its imagery. Some were painfully precise. When A Local Poet viewed the James Bay Mud Flats in the Victoria Daily Colonist for 17 June 1904, he wrote simply,

When I survey the wondrous flats

  I always stop and think,

And put my fingers to my nose

  To guard away the stink.

But very soon it will be gone,

  No more offensive smell,

And what will be the city’s pride

  The C.P.R. Hotel.

The hotel would be the Empress, opened in 1908. (See also the Suspect’s poem below.)

This book is full of poems, both effulgent or concise. None of them, of course, will ever appear in the Oxford Book of English Verse. The fact that someone felt strongly enough to write them, however, and someone else believed that their poems were important enough to publish gives them significance as a kind of historical evidence. Some would argue that they convey feelings and ideas more intensely and more clearly than do prose works.

Before we consider why such verse is useful to students of Victoria’s past, we should ask: what exactly is a poem? Poetry is a response in words to a vivid experience or